AMHERST, Mass.—Fr. John Dear, a Jesuit priest and peace activist, will speak on “The Road to Peace: Walking the Way of Gospel Nonviolence” on Wednesday, March 14, at 7 p.m. in Johnson Chapel at Amherst College. Fr. Dear’s talk will be free and open to the public.

Fr. John Dear has written 17 books on peace and justice, most recently Living Peace (2001) and Jesus the Rebel (2000.) He has served as the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an interfaith antiwar organization, and worked with the homeless in New York City, where he lives, and in Richmond, Virginia. Fr. Dear, a graduate of Duke University, taught theology at Fordham University and has also edited books by or about Henri Nouwen, Daniel Berrigan and Nobel Laureate Mairead Corrigan.

His work in shelters, soup kitchens and community centers has taken Fr. Dear around the world, to Iraq, El Salvador, Guatemala and Northern Ireland. A disarmament protest earned Fr. Dear nearly a year in prison. After his arrest for attempting to beat a F15-E fighter-bomber into a plowshare at a North Carolina air base, the Raleigh News & Observer opined “The criminal justice system has plenty of genuinely bad guys to worry about. Let it concentrate on those who inflict real damage on the world, not on those who are trying to save it.” Fr. Dear has been arrested more than 75 times for acts of civil disobedience.

Fr. Dear’s talk is sponsored by the Amherst College Newman Club and Community Outreach Program, and Pax Christi of Amherst, Mass.